


crumbling under the weight of a nation

by marsbareater12



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Medical Inaccuracies, avengerkink, graphic depictions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 05:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsbareater12/pseuds/marsbareater12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a prompt at the kinkmeme:</p><p>One night, after a very bad battle, Bruce wakes up from a nightmare and smells blood. He knows the cycles of all the women in the tower, so he knows it's not that.</p><p>So he follows the scent, and eventually ends up in a toilet, where Steve is, well, cutting. Except he's Steve and he heals really fast so his version of cutting is a little extreme.</p><p>It turns out, the super-soldier serum doesn't really help with mental health, and Steve has been hiding some serious issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	crumbling under the weight of a nation

**Author's Note:**

> so since this was written for the kinkmeme the wordcount is way on the downlow, apologies. 
> 
> also idk what i'm doing about the clint food issues fic. i'm not really liking my characterization there. 
> 
> other than that, just be aware of the self harm and major amounts of self loathing here, okay.

You’re sitting on the thirty-third floor of the house, the en suite furthest away from the elevator, and your whole suite is dark except for this one, yellow bulb in this tiny room-

 

and you’re _crying_ and you can’t deal with this anymore and you’ve known since you woke up, since the world changed and there were flashing buildings at you and people speaking into plastic against their ears and walls that had crumpled behind you, you’ve known since then that you were always going to end up like this because you just can’t keep doing it anymore.

 

You considered ending it, twice, three times, when the rain was pouring down around your brain and your self worth cotton wool lining your ears to words of love, but you couldn’t - Erskine’s work had already been wasted through your foolishness ( _idiot, should’ve checked, wanted to get into the army and let them steal the greatest weapon the U.S. had from under your nose and it was all. your. fault)_ and you couldn’t waste yourself, couldn’t waste this body, your mutated DNA, the only living key that could possibly unlock the secret of the serum once again.

 

You let out a loud sob, banging your head against the wall of the bathtub, hands scrabbling for purchase on the cool, seamless tile beneath you, clawed fingers coming up with nothing but blood from where they’d pressed into your palms, and you turned them over and they were already healed and _goddammit_ , couldn’t even hurt yourself right, could you.

 

Your head hit your hand, leaning into it, tears streaming down and loud, choked noises tearing themselves free of your lungs, twisting and writhing and corrupting the air in front of you but you couldn’t care anymore, you didn’t care what was right and what was wrong, you just needed it to stop hurting, for five minutes, _please._

 

Brown, curled hair flashed into your vision, lining the backs of your closed eyelids, and you pressed your fist into your mouth to stifle the scream. _I’m so sorry, Peggy, I’m so sorry, missed the date, get someone better, live with someone better, lead a life without me, please_ and then you realized you were thinking in the present again, like she was twenty, like you, and you bit down even harder on the curled mass of flesh in your mouth, shoulders jerking with every uneven breath. Bucky and Peggy and Erskine and Howard and they were all gone, gone, gone, laid waste by unforgiving Time, who’d, inexplicably, decided to forgive _you_ , and instead of making use of this second chance, you kept finding yourself in starkly-lit bathrooms and in the same position, over and over again.

 

You drew your knees up to your chest, missing, just for a moment, how your old ones used to knock against the hollows of your ribs - even sick, asthmatic Steve was a better Steve than the monster the serum gave, the man who’d caved under the weight of carrying a nation and couldn’t let anyone know. You other arm wrapped around them, keeping them tight, drawn in, you had to hold yourself together because you had to hold everyone else together, and you couldn’t let yourself be weak, not now, not ever.

 

Inside your chest, your heart fluttered, beating against your chest in a futile attempt at escape, and it felt so _empty_ inside there, like there was nothing but bare air laying underneath your skin, and you ached to feel full, to feel wholesome once more, like there was something other than inky black poison running through your veins, darkening everything you touched until you kept your hands wrapped and tightly by your side.

 

Another choked sob, another heave of breath. Your whole body was against this bathroom, irreparably blackening it - god, you’ve even failed at that.

 

You imagined what it would be like for Peggy to see you, for Bucky, knowing they’d find you and pick you up and tear your mind out of your decaying brain, replacing it with soft words and light touches. You know they’d take care of you - and the air seems so much colder now, pressing against your skin like it’s trying to burrow under, an army of worms against a helpless sack of dirt, and everything hurts so much _more_ now and you can’t do this, you can’t –

 

You rock forward on your feet, arms unfurling and quickly finding purchase on the edges of the bathtub, the towel rack, lurching forward unsteadily, useless, _perfect_ body trying to compensate for the quick draw up, and you didn’t care, couldn’t hold yourself up anymore, and the towel rack bent and screamed under your grip and –

 

_oh._

 

You moved to that now, both hands on it, ripping it apart until one piece of the metal spilt from the others, jagged, torn, and you bent it up and facing towards you and took in a sharp breath, grimacing at how you were fuelling your existence, once again, before slamming the inside of your forearm down on it, metal piercing easy, and dragging it down, towards your elbow.

 

and you exhaled and everything was so bright and clear and sharp, just for a moment, before the skin started knitting itself back together, and you were crying again now, sobs tearing free and jerking your body with each ragged breath, and you slammed it down, again and again, tearing vertical, horizontal, through the newly formed skin, around your arm, until the underside of it was nothing but a cadaver, cut up and used already, left to rot outside in the storm, and finally, finally, digging your fingers further and further into the mass of muscle and veins, pulling and tearing and sobbing and heaving and –

 

“Steve?”


End file.
